The Voice In The Ceiling

The value of want is hard to understand.

It is much easier to wax poetically over it if it isn't you doing the wanting.

Imagine being five years old and living in a two room apartment with your mother, father, sister and sometimes your cousins.

Mostly you have enough to eat, although it may not always be the most nutritious of foods.

The heat doesn't come out of vents, or little boxes on the floor. It comes from all those relatives crammed into bed with you.

Santa comes to your house, but he brings different things than he does to some of your kindergarten classmates.

You realize something is different and yet your world is still sweet.

You don't have cable tv, but at night, when it is dark and you can't sleep, sometimes you hear things.

Sometimes it is words that filter through the thin walls of your apartment building that you don't understand; people talking about faithfulness and robbing Peter to pay Paul when your only connection to faith is Sunday morning and you don't have a clue who Peter and Paul are.

But sometimes there are stories that filter through the ceiling. Stories told out loud in a quiet voice about other boys and girls who do things and have adventures and even get in trouble. You don't know them either, but still, you see pictures in your head that leave you with a need to make up your own stories.

Over the years the wanting will become so much worse, but if you become the voice in the ceiling, that want will slowly fade away and be replaced by a richness you never dreamed was possible.

It just depends on what you see when your eyes are closed and your heart and head open.